Press release – New Year Plant Hunt results from BSBI

The results are in for BSBI’s tenth New Year Plant Hunt, when plant-lovers cross Britain and Ireland head out to see what is flowering in their local patch. 1,811 people took part this year – more than ever before – but restrictions around Covid-19 had surprising impacts on the wild flowers they spotted in bloom….

Hen Harrier brood meddling on trial (1)

On Wednesday and Thursday this week, three Court of Appeal judges will hear appeals from myself and the RSPB on the subject of Natural England’s controversial licensing of brood meddling of Hen Harriers. The three judges will be considering the legal point of whether Justice Lang was right to dismiss our judicial reviews on this…

Guy Shorrock – Antipodean Albatross

Guy writes: as a young boy interested in birds, albatrosses, being birds mainly of the southern hemisphere, always had something of a mystical status to me.  From school, I remember an English Literature lesson covering the ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ by Samuel Coleridge.  This lengthy poem revolves around the killing of an albatross…

Tim Melling – Redpoll

Tim writes: some books and websites call this species Lesser Redpoll (Acanthis cabaret) but there is no genetic difference between these and Common Redpolls (A. flammae).  And from 1 January 2018 BOU officially dropped this species to become a subspecies of Common Redpoll when they adopted the IOC species guidelines.   So this is now Common…